DS Ally McBeal Absentia
by Thor2000
Summary: Ally McBeal is married into the Collins Family, but despite now being a wife and mother, she still works as a lawyer. When her husband is hurt in her absence, everyone wonders where she is.


Calista Flockhart voice-over:

"Daylight rises over the house known as Seaview on the edge of the estate known as Collinwood. It has been several years since the cries of ghosts in the night or the wailing of the Widows has haunted the Collins family who lives here. Today, the screams that fill the family with dread come from the voices of children unfettered without restraints and unbridled freedom. It is into this family that Ally McBeal has married. She has found the person she calls her prince charming and with him comes a price she cannot avoid: two brunette female children who tempt her patience and rob her of her sanity. She has wanted these children her entire life and now she realizes that they have minds and voices that she cannot control."

"Why doesn't she just spank them?"

"Georgia!" Ally screamed at the top of her lungs. "Pick up your toys!" She stumbled partially up the stairs to the second floor with a doll in one hand and plastic dinosaur in the other, turned left over the balcony and headed to the north wing of the house toward the nursery. The room was larger than the master bedroom on the corner of the house. Two windows behind the TV looked out over the front yard. Surrounding two child-size beds pushed against two opposing walls, the floor was littered with books, naked Barbie dolls, furniture for an empty dollhouse, a scattering of color pencils mating with broken crayons, every children's cup from the kitchen, blocks, a dried out paint set and a few ripped open bags of crackers. Ally's eyes panned from the partially ripped Britney Spears poster on the wall to the paint on the mirror and the dripping ice cream on the bureau.

"But you already picked them up." The slightly taller of the two brunette curly haired girls looked up at her and responded innocently. Next to her surrounded in chocolate chip cookies dumped from a bag amidst Barbie clothes, little Lainey turned her big brown eyes up to her mother and revealed her round cheeks stained from melted chocolate. A precious sparkle of youthful innocence danced in those eyes like fairies dancing on a tranquil lake. Ally's face melted upon her little face looking up at her and fell in love with her all over again.

"Honey," She lifted up her three-year-old baby. "I'm going to miss you both so much. I'm going to be helping your Uncle Spenser in Tennessee for two weeks. Oh god, I don't think your father's going to be able to handle the two of you alone." Little Lainey rode her hip as far as the bathroom and then became sat down on the edge of the tiled counter. Dousing the washcloth in warm water, Ally wiped off the chocolate from her daughter's face and found the beautiful little girl underneath the dirty face.

"Daddy usually just gets grandma to come and help." Georgia followed her into the kitchen.

"I believe it." Ally rolled her eyes, picked up her daughter clinging to her and returned to the nursery room, although right now, it was more of a minefield with very little space to walk. Corn chips crunched into the rug as Ally stepped into the room, grabbed a dishtowel being used as a blanket for a Barbie and tried wiping up the melted ice cream from the bureau. Trying to remind herself why she wanted to be a mommy, she dumped the limp dripping box into the empty wastebasket behind the closet door and started picking up the loose trash littering the room. Georgia tilted her head up to her mother scrambling around pushing the litter together and uncovering the carpet.

"I want you two…" Ally stacked eight children's cups together in a line atop each other and lifted them together. "…To put your Barbies away, put the furniture back in the dollhouse and straighten this room."

"Are you coming back?" Georgia asked.

"Yes."

"Oh man…" Lainey sounded like her father as Ally took the cups back to the kitchen. Passing the stairs into the foyer, she entered the south wing past Maddie's empty room waiting for her return from boarding school and then turned down the back stairs into the kitchen. Dumping the cups into the kitchen, Ally realized she had one other irk and moved to the downstairs back hall for her husband's study. He wasn't doing his usual typing on the computer. He had several sheets of paper out and was writing and figuring out numbers and quotients. Ally peered over his shoulder as he deciphered numbers into letters.

"What are you doing?" She asked. She picked up an envelope from an Ian Malcolm at UCLA on the desk.

"Ian always sends me letters in this mathematical language he created." William labored forward feeling like a caveman. "I never was much of a math wiz so he keeps me on my toes with these letters I must decipher to answer."

"Oh," Ally wondered if there was anywhere he didn't know anyone. "Are you sure you're going to be able to handle the girls yourself? I'm going to be gone handing my brother's case for two weeks; this isn't like Boston where I'm only gone for a few days at a time."

"I can handle it." William didn't look up.

"No," Ally put her hand on his shoulder. "I do not want you getting wrapped up at your desk. I need to know I can trust you to handle them."

"Handle them?" The phone rang on his desk as William peered up to her wondering if he should be considered insulted. He quickly tapped for the speaker and continued talking. "Hello?"

"William, this is Charlene in Atalanta." She owned a house he had investigated as a haunted house. "Can you come down again? My Bill's gone again and I'm getting strange noises again."

"Charlene," William continued translating Ian's letter. "This isn't a good time. It's probably just your hot water heater or the AC. Just get Anthony to look at it. I can't come down every time."

"Are you talking to William?" Charlene's friend Suzanne Sugarbaker looked up to her from the sofa with a short pompadour of dark brown hair and rich blue azure eyes. Pausing from filing her fingernails, she stood, wandered over with attitude and reached for the phone. "Let me talk to him."

"Suzanne," Charlene looked at her. "Something is peck-peck-pecking at my walls and it ain't Edgar Allen Poe!"

"Is that that creepy guy at the gas station?" Suzanne made a face as if the roots of her fair were blonde and lurched the phone away from her. "William, you still married to that skinny lady lawyer?" Her voice emanated less than tactful from the speakerphone in the Seaview study.

"Yes, he is." Ally responded perturbed.

"Ally, sweetheart, are you there too!" Suzanne turned all sweet and sugary and dripping in Southern hospitality as Charlene Frazier rolled her eyes. "Listen, I'm mad at this guy for standing me up. Would I get in trouble for mailing him a little old pipe bomb?"

Ally and William looked at each other wondering if their life was a TV series.

"Um," Ally paused a bit. "It would be a Federal offense. You would most definitely get a prison sentence."

"Crud." Suzanne cursed. "How about a rattlesnake in a box?" Her eyes blinked seriously as she waited for a response. In Collinsport, Ally looked to her husband over these characters he knew.

"Where do you find these people?" She asked William.

PART TWO

At nine in the morning, William's sister, Sara, had driven Ally to the airfield in nearby Bethpage where Joe Hackett picked her up in his plane and flew her to Logan airport in Boston to catch her flight to Nashville to cover her brother's legal hassles purchasing real estate. In her absence, William bemused her opinion that he could not handle their daughters by himself for more than a week. So what if they spread their toys over the house? He didn't mind picking up after them. It gave him something to do when he was stalling on a new writing project or had writer's block on another novel. If by some chance he did run into troubles, he had a mom, a sister, three female cousins and two aunts wanting to be moms again to fall upon. He wasn't a helpless single father with a wife not coming back; he was a proud father of two little girls who remained unpredictable and completely carefree.

"Hi, monsters…" He dropped to his knees to reach their height and looked into their big brown eyes. "Do you want hamburgers tonight?"

"Yeah!" Georgia squealed excitedly. She loved her hamburgers, but pizza was a lot more fun to eat because it could be so messy. Lainey loved them too. She nodded her head excitedly just at the thought of going back to the plastic mazes in front of the burger place.

"Okay," He tweaked their cherubic cheeks and patted their thick curly hair. "Let me change my shirt and get new pants on. I want you two to pick up your toys and take them to your room."

"Okay!" Little Georgia cried out with glee and picked up a Barbie doll before the television. In the absence of her father, Lainey started pushing and raking things under the sofa. Holding the flap open, she slid books far underneath, tossed naked and semi-dressed dolls, shoved underneath a pink plastic corvette as the figure of Ken in the driver's seat lost his head on the low bottom edge of the sofa. Georgia tossed that quickly out of sight into the kitchen to be found again in another week. A few Legos and tiny plastic animals were mixed in with the Barbie accessories as they hurriedly cleared the room rather than take it all up stairs. Their big red ball wouldn't fit under the sofa quite so easily. Lainey tried pushing it and then Georgia tried kicking it under. It looked like it was going to have to be taken upstairs. Leaving her sister to hide the mess, Georgia grabbed the ball and raced for the stairway in the foyer. She was barely up to the balcony as her sister cried out for her.

"Uh-oh!"

Leaving the ball in the stairway, Georgia turned round and hastened back to the living room. A few feet into the room, she skidded to a stop. There was a spot of melted ice cream in the carpet next to the chair where the bowl had fallen. The last time they stained the carpet, their mother had spanked them.

"The chair!" Georgia took a deep breath and decided. Hastening to the other side, she began pushing it over the spot on the floor. Lainey helped her as they found a good way to avoid trouble, but it wasn't good enough. As they moved the chair, their dried chocolate syrup stain from last month came out of hiding. Lainey looked at it wondering what to do.

"We need a bigger chair." Georgia realized and brushed her brown curls out of her eye. Eyeing the standing ashtray next to the sofa, they moved that out of the corner and laid that atop of the stain. It wasn't perfect, but at least they weren't going to get yelled at this time.

"Okay, girls…" William tucked his new shirt into his pants on the upstairs landing and turned down the staircase. "Are you ready to…" His foot came down on the ball under him and his equilibrium rolled forward. He reached to grab the banister to stop his fall, but instead clutched empty space and spun forward back first. His spine hit the steps and his head hit the wall. Rolling head over feet, there was a crash, a crunch and a loud cacophony of noises and spinning images before the dizzying scenes before him stopped. In the living room, Georgia looked to her little sister as the noises abated.

"What was that?" She asked. Lainey looked round the room thinking something was coming through the ceiling and then looked out to the foyer and her father at the bottom of the stairs. One leg was bent under his other leg resting on the bottom step and his left arm was under his body. His other arm was wrapped over the top of his head as if he was asleep. She scurried up to him and looked down at him.

"Ready for burgers!" She announced. "Let's go!"

He didn't move.

"Daddy?" Georgia stood over her father and nudged him a bit. "Daddy, wake up." She shook him a bit more.

"Daddy, are you there?" Lainey forced his left eye open to no response.

"Daddy, wake up!" Georgia shook him even harder, but then looked up as Lainey cringed and made a face. Something was wiped over the front of her little overalls. It was blood just as when she cut her hand on the can in the yard.

"I think daddy's hurt bad." Her face curled up afraid.

"Daddy, wake up!" Georgia tried turning over her father again. His head just lolled back and forth from her shaking. Lainey scampered into the living room and returned with the wireless phone in her hands.

"Call someone!" She gave it to her sister.

"But mommy says we're not allowed to use the phone." Georgia's face contorted with fear. "I don't want a spanking!"

"But daddy's hurt." Lainey told her in her most frightened voice. "What are we going to do?"

"Daddy…" Georgia shook his body once more, but he remained unconscious. He fell flat to his back and his head turned upward to the ceiling. His four-year-old daughter looked upon his placid features and started bawling at him.

"I wish mommy was here!" Lainey started crying as well.

PART THREE

Just as the dreams of Ally McBeal came true, so did the dreams of Angelique Bouchard before her. Both women had married their loves and had their children. Angelique, however, relished having a home free from adolescents and a life of knowing her grandchildren were but a phone call away. An odd feeling of apprehension meanwhile had come over her in the last few minutes as she tried to reason her sensation to it. Something didn't feel right in the Old House of Collinwood. She looked to her husband brushing up on his American History by the fireplace and stirred to the liquor cabinet. She hadn't had feelings like this in a long time.

"You're restless." Her loving Barnabas observed.

"Yes," Angelique replied fraught with inexplicable concern. "I feel something odd, but…" She brushed her long blonde hair back with her fingers. "I can't figure out where it's coming from."

"When was the last time we had the grandchildren here?" Barnabas lifted his head up.

"Not feeling old enough?" Angelique widened her eyes to him. Barnabas wryly lifted his eyebrows and briefly sipped his glass of sherry.

"It's been weeks since we've seen our grandchildren." He spoke out loud. "Why don't you call William and see if he'll bring his daughters over?"

"It's early." Angelique remained an ageless grandmother as she reached for the phone on the desk. "Maybe I ought to invite him to dinner for tonight. God knows Ally doesn't cook very often." She tapped out a few numbers as Barnabas read a bit more about the American Civil War. Casually strolling behind him as he read, Angelique waited for a response from her son's home and leaned over to her husband's ear.

"The North won." She told him.

"Hello…" A tiny voice answered from the phone in the house known as Seaview where Angelique's son named William Collins lived.

"Hello?" Angelique recognized her granddaughter's voice. "Is this one of the babies?" She beamed proudly over them.

"Hi grandma!" Georgia cried out.

"Is your daddy there?"

"He's sleeping on the floor."

"He's sleeping on the floor?" Angelique asked a bit confused. Barnabus's attention was roused as he marked his place and set aside his book. Angelique looked up to him a bit perplexed as she plied her granddaughter for details. "Why is he sleeping on the floor?"

"I think he fell down the steps."

"He fell down the steps?" Angelique clutched her heart as her daughter coming down the stairs of the Old House had her attention taken away. Sara stopped on the bottom threshold as her father, Barnabas, took the phone with concern. Somewhere in her pretty blonde mind, Sara realized something was wrong and with a mental message from her mother dashed out the doors for her mother's Jaguar parked out front.

"Georgia," Barnabas took charge has his once immortal heart skipped a beat for his son. "Is he hurt? Is he just unconscious?" Outside the Old House, Angelique heard her car squealing its tires across the back road of the estate. She knew Sara was a terrible driver, but she didn't care now as the girl raced the back road of the estate for her brother's house.

"What's unconscious?" Little Georgia asked.

"Asleep." Barnabas told her. "Has he talked to you?"

"He won't wake up."

Sara sped through the curve in her mother's car past Rose Cottage while her cousins watched her. Jamison Collins noticed her bounce and skid off the road for a few feet and then drop down the rolling hill out of sight for Seaview Road. J.R. Loomis dusted thrown leaves from the back of the car off his jacket and turned to Jamison.

"Who gave her a driver's license?" He wondered. "Mario Andretti?"

"Darling," Angelique took the Old House phone next. "Get a pillow and prop up his head. Can you do that?"

"He's bleeding from the top of his head!"

"Barnabas," Angelique looked to her husband with concerned fear. "He's been bleeding." Her eyes started filling with tears.

Outside the estate known as Collinwood, Chris Jennings checked his mail as he returned home. Perusing his postcard from his sister Amy living in Manhattan, he heard squealing tires racing through the tree-lined back road and a roaring engine coming up the block as Sara Collins spun sideways in the street and blew autumn leaves back into his property. Ignoring the driveway, she took the car where it wasn't meant to go and pressed the gas pedal hard to force it to drive into the rolling front yard. The tires of the sports car ripped up the yard in its wake and hastened for the house set back from the road.

"Grandma," Georgia looked out the front windows. "Daddy's going to be mad because someone's driving in the yard!"

"That's your Aunt Sara, princess..." Angelique tried to breath a bit of relief the phone knowing her first-born son was injured, but she didn't want to hang up. "Please let her in the house. She can help you!"

"It's Aunt Sara!" Lainey looked out the window with eyes full of tears and raced to the door. She pulled to open it, but it was locked and the latch on the door was too high for her little fingers.

"Girls, open the door!" Sara left the car running and pranced onto the front landing. "It's me. Let me in!"

"We can't reach it!" The girls fumbled on the other side. She heard them scuffling on the door inside the house and gasped for air.

"Get away from it!" She yelled and kicked at the hard oak door. It vibrated from her impact, but it didn't open. Kicking it several more times, she thought about racing around then house and coming through the kitchen, but not without one more try. Taking a few steps back, she hurled her weight forward, felt her shoulder snap out of her socket and crashed to the floor beside her brother. Lainey and Georgia looked up with surprised little faces as their aunt suddenly appeared in the foyer. Wracked with pain through her upper back, Sara lifted herself up and crawled to her brother. Her hand took the wireless phone from Georgia.

"Mom, I'm here." She said first. "It looks like he hit the back of his head coming down the stairs. He's still breathing, but I'm going to hang up and call the ambulance. I'll see you at the hospital." Sara severed the call and dialed 911 as she spoke to her nieces. "Honey, how long has been like this?"

"A long time." Lainey answered.

"A long time?" Sara noticed the TV still on. "How many cartoons have you seen since he fell?"

"Well," Georgia rolled her eyes as she thought. "Barney went off and then Mr. Spongepants came on and then we started watching Mr. Sportacus."

"Oh my god, it's been almost an hour…." Sara's blue eyes widened.

"911 here." The voice said on the phone.

"Yes, this is Sara Collins at 1164 Seaview…" She looked up to her nieces again. "Where's your mom!" Georgia just shrugged her shoulders as Lainey squeezed her stuffed Barney and looked at her father.

"We're not getting burgers now, are we?" Lainey asked her sister.

PART FOUR

It was starting to seem as if the Collins family was always at the hospital for something or another. J.R. had been in last week after wrecking his first car, and just the previous month, David's daughter, Carrie, was being treated for a severe allergic reaction to peanuts. Uncle Roger had died the previous month after struggling with cancer for a long time and before that Quentin was being treated for back trouble. Quentin's daughter, Amanda Collins looked up to her Uncle Barnabas and Aunt Angelique and then her cousin Sara sipping a can of diet soda. Wishing she had her cousin's figure, she waited like everyone else in the waiting area of the hospital adjacent to the emergency entrance. Sitting down across from Amanda, Barnabas propped his cane before up before him as Angelique fretfully pulled her long hair back trying to hope for the best of news. She longed a bit for the days when Julia could slip in and out with news, but then, not even the good doctor Hoffman could live forever.

"Angelique?" Maggie Collins entered the waiting room with her light jacket on over the leotard and tights she wore teaching her exercise classes at the aerobics center. Quentin was with her as well having decided that the interest of the family over-weighed time spent with his wife. "What happened? Lizzie called me at the center and told me William was taken to the hospital."

"He fell down the stairs at the house." Angelique hugged her briefly for support. "Ally's out of town again and the girls were alone with him for almost an hour…"

"Alone with him lying on the floor?" Quentin asked. "They must have been scared out of their minds."

"Actually," Sara rose carrying her diet soda. "Those little monsters are pretty sharp. They stayed by his side trying to wake him up until mom called."

"The worst fact," Barnabas leaned onto his cane as he stood once more. "…Is the not knowing. They pushed us all in here upon arrival and they haven't told us anything. I don't know if my son is alive or dead and they just keep us here waiting and telling us someone will be here soon."

"Has anyone called Boston to tell Ally?" Maggie noticed her daughter present then looked back to Angelique.

"I called John in Boston." Amanda broke her nervous silence. "He said she wasn't there."

"Well," Quentin wondered where else Ally often went. "If she's not in Boston, where is she?"

"The little monsters said she was with their uncle." Sara finished her diet soda and stuffed the can in her purse to recycle it. "I don't have their numbers, but Aunt Carolyn has the number of Ally's parents home in Maryland and they should be able to get a message to her." She rolled her eyes tiredly and rubbed her shoulder. "She'll get the message."

Amanda silently sighed under her breath and tried to imagine a life without William in her life. She began wishing that she had told her cousin that she had feelings for him that had never gone away since they were kids. Her eyes panned to her mother, to Angelique and then toward her father. Rising from her seat, she looked into his roguish blue eyes looking back at her and then defeatedly pretended to get distracted by a hospital orderly pushing a cart.

"Anyone want anything from the machines?" She pulled her red hair back. "Dad, you want a drink?"

"No, honey…" Quentin resisted the offer as his mind drifted back to taking William, his son and their friends on fishing and camping trips. He had tried to show the kids the sort of life his Uncle Benjamin had given him growing up. Wishing he could relive those days but for one time more, he stayed standing as Maggie took her daughter's seat and placed the young girl's purse aside. Angelique then cocked her head up earnestly and they all looked toward Dr. Tim Shaw coming toward him. Resembling an older and more robust Chris Jennings, he was clad in a plaid shirt and dark trousers with his hospital badge dangling from his shirt pocket. A moment to sign a clipboard for a nurse, the practicing physician found himself once more the hospital liaison for the Collins family. Amanda dashed back to hear the news with her pink change purse in her hand.

"Mr. and Mrs. Collins?" He looked up tired and fatigued. "I've got some good news and bad news. First up, William is out of x-ray and there doesn't seem to be any serious damage to his spine or neck. It looks like he landed on his right arm first and cracked his ulna and radius bones in his forearm. That must have slowed his fall enough to slide down on his left side to the bottom of staircase."

"The bad news?" Barnabas reacted forlorn.

"He did crack the top of his head." Dr. Shaw answered as Angelique reacted as a worried mother. "Now, the brain is a lot more impervious than a lot of people believe. It's floating in liquid and surrounded by thick bone. There are stories going back to the Nineteenth century of men who survived bullets lodged in their skulls living ordinary lives, but until William wakes up, we have no way of knowing if he has any trauma."

"I have to see him." Angelique implored Dr. Shaw. "Please, he's my only son. I know he'll wake up for me."

"It's not a good time." Dr. Shaw noticed her appalled resentment at being refused. "He's in neurology and we're not set up insurance wise for non-staff to go back there. Believe me, he's getting the utmost attention."

"But I must see him…" Angelique was insistent as Maggie tried to support her.

"Doctor, please," Barnabas looked up with a proposal. "Angelique has always had a, dare I say it, magical way with our son. He's come out of all sorts of near fatal injuries with her nearby."

"Yes," Quentin raised his eyebrows. "You could say she's some sort of a witch or something." He mused on secrets only he was aware of beyond the family.

"I'm sorry." Shaw turned the request down. "But my hands are tied. If he makes the night, he'll be in a private room in the morning. You can see him then." With an apologetic shrug, he turned round on his right heel and continued down the hallway corridor. Quentin glimpsed to Barnabas and then toward Maggie wondering what to do next. Sara exhaled fraught with concern and noticed Amanda slipping into a trance-like state. Angelique found herself slipping between the cracks of motherhood and her former mystical pursuits. She turned to the direction of the vending machines looking for guidance from her reflection in the subdued light on the machines.

"Angelique," Her husband tried to pull her closer. "We have to have faith our son will wake in the morning."

"Barnabas," Angelique made a face she had not made in a long time. Barnabas shuddered a bit in her presence when she reverted to her old self and scowled back to her ready to confront her if necessary. "If our son dies because of his interference, do not stop me from what I do."

PART FIVE

Seaview House felt a bit dreamy as William Collins walked its halls. He felt as if he was in a dream as rooms he didn't know he had popped up in place of others and corridors stretched further than before for rooms that didn't exist. He felt like a phantom haunting his own house, a house that seemed to bend and fold round him with liquid movements. His head turned from the back of the foyer where he stood and up to the front entrance filled with light. Ally stood in the light beaming toward him from a far as a woman in love. She seemed content and her soul finally at peace with the world as she looked upon him. William looked to her with the same sort of peace she had given his life. He stepped forward and the room moved a bit. Ally and the entrance slid away from him on a moving track as he tried to reach her. He started moving faster and she started moving away even faster. She could not be doing this. She was his life, his love, his reason for living… He tried to run faster, but she couldn't wait any longer. She looked away for a second unable to wait for him and stepped from the light of the doorway for which he was racing. Where was she going? Why was he leaving her? A mournful cry poured from his lips and a tear fell from his eyes to think she was being taken from him…

"Ally…" His arm reached up and his eyes finally opened. Staring up to a room he didn't know, he felt a weight to his chest from someone laying on it. Lifting her head up, Ally looked deep into his eyes; her own eyes full of tears, she choked back on grief in her heart. Her hand reached back to the back of his neck and she kissed him grateful for what she considered a miracle. Her voice murmured thanks to invisible gods as William gained his bearings. His restrained neck only allowed him to look about so far as an intravenous drip by his side for his arm and the steel railings on his bed. Standing by the bed, Ally pushed one of the railings down to get closer to him. She held his head in her hands and closed her lips over his as her long hair fell from her shoulders.

"Oh god, oh god…" Her voice was trembling with fearful concern. "To think that I almost lost you…" A relieved chuckle emerged from her frightened features. "Don't you ever do that again…"

"Am I in the hospital?"

"Yes," Ally sat on the bed with him between her arms. "You fell down the stairs and cracked the top of your head." She paused lightly shaking her head. "Spenser's girlfriend gave me the message when we got back to his apartment and I hurried back as fast as possible. To think, I came that close to being a widow." She kissed again grateful to have him back.

"All I remember…" William searched cloudy and sleepy memories in the foggy remnants of his mind. "Is stepping on one of the girl's toys on the stairs and trying to stop my fall. I feel like I broke my back." He reached up and stroked the top of her head with his loose hand. Ally meanwhile heard chosen words from his description and pictured her home unseen with toys clogging and filling up the staircase and then herself or William again crashing to the bottom. She clenched her teeth with her head resting on her husband and glared a bit upon realizing the dire fate her daughters had placed their father.

"I'm going to kill those girls…" She told herself.

"What's in your hand?" William felt something clutched in her left hand.

"Oh this," Ally sat up straight on the bed and revealed to him a small round talisman made from tarnish brass. It was a flat figure cut out of a round coin with obscure Oriental inscriptions encircled around it. He tilted it to the light trying to read the inscription. "Your mother gave it to me." Ally continued. "She said it was a good luck charm."

"This is Okuninushi." Her husband recalled his Oriental Mythology. "He was an ancient Japanese god of health and beneficence."

"Really," Ally scratched her chin as she looked at it herself and then realized he could read Japanese. "Well, how about that?" She placed it aside and beamed toward her husband as a woman in love. Leaning over him, she kissed him again and sniffed her nose emotionally spent. Sitting back up again, she looked at the talisman again.

"Are you sure your mother isn't a witch or something?" She asked him partially serious.

END


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